[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 101 (Friday, July 24, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1421-E1424]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          AMERICA FACES THREAT FROM A BALLISTIC MISSILE ATTACK

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NEWT GINGRICH

                               of georgia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 23, 1998

  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, as former Secretary of Defense Donald 
Rumsfeld pointed out earlier this week, America faces a very real and 
serious threat from a ballistic missile attack. The bipartisan Rumsfeld 
commission unanimously concluded that the threat is much greater and 
the warning time available to defend against that threat is much 
shorter than the Clinton administration has admitted. Finally, the 
commission expressed concern that

[[Page E1422]]

the ability of our intelligence community to assess these threats is 
severely deteriorating. I believe that it is now more important than 
ever to renew our commitment to working to deploy a national missile 
defense system. I want to bring the following enlightened editorials by 
William Safire, Frank Gaffney, Jr., and Thomas Moore to the attention 
of my colleagues which echo the serious concerns expressed by Mr. 
Rumsfeld and his colleagues on the Commission.

               [From the Washington Times; July 21, 1998]

                Alarm Bell on Vulnerability to Missiles


   The United States must promptly begin deploying defenses against 
                        ballistic missile attack

                        (By Frank Gaffney, Jr.)

       The release last week of a long-awaited ``second opinion'' 
     on the missile threat to the United States more than lived up 
     to high expectations.
       The blue-ribbon, bipartisan panel--chartered by Congress 
     and ably led by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--
     unanimously warned that ``the U.S. might well have little or 
     no warning before operational deployment'' of ballistic 
     missiles capable of delivering, for example, Iranian, Iraqi 
     or North Korean weapons of mass destruction against American 
     cities.
       This finding stands in stark contrast to the pollyannish, 
     and highly politicized, judgment rendered by the Clinton 
     administration's 1995 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on 
     the emerging danger posed by ballistic missiles. Incredibly, 
     that NIE found there would be no threat from long-range 
     ballistic missiles for at least 15 years.
       Of course, in order to reach this preposterously sanguine 
     conclusion, the Intelligence Community had to make three 
     heroic assumptions:
       (1) Neither Russia nor China--which have such long-range 
     missiles in place today--would pose a danger.
       (2) Neither of these nations would help any other state 
     accelerate the acquisition of ballistic missile technology.
       (3) And only the continental United States would be 
     considered as targets, since Alaska and Hawaii would be 
     within range of medium-range missiles from Korea.
       The Rumsfeld Commission made short work of these 
     assumptions. It noted that Russia and China are both 
     undergoing unpredictable transitions and are actively 
     spreading ballistic missile and other dangerous technologies. 
     (The commission also confirms a recent finding of Sen. Thad 
     Cochran's Governmental Affairs Subcommittee that the United 
     States is itself an important, albeit unintentional, 
     contributor to the hemorrhage of proliferation-sensitive 
     equipment and know-how.)
       Perhaps most importantly, Mr. Rumsfeld and his cohorts--
     including Dr. Berry Blechman, Dr. Richard Garwin and Gen. Lee 
     Butler, individuals expected by the Democrats who appointed 
     them to dissent from any sharp critique of the 
     administration's NIE and, thereby, to neutralize the impact 
     of the commission's findings--addressed themselves to the 
     missile threat to all of the United States. They confirmed 
     that Alaska and Hawaii are at risk in the near-term. The 
     Rumsfeld commissioners went on, however, to point out that 
     missiles now in the inventories of virtually every bad actor 
     on the planet could be readily launched from tramp steamers 
     or other vessels at the vast majority of the American 
     population living within 100 miles of the nation's 
     coastlines.
       As columnist William Safire pointed out in the New York 
     Times yesterday, this reality means the United States could 
     be subjected to blackmail, with potentially profound 
     diplomatic and strategic implications. He lays out three 
     frighteningly plausible scenarios in which the use of North 
     Korean, Iraqi or Chinese missiles are threatened to compel 
     American accommodation.
       Moreover, Mr. Safire makes explicit a conclusion the 
     Rumsfeld Commission could only imply, given that its mandate 
     was limited to addressing the missile threat, not what should 
     be done in response to it: The United States must promptly 
     begin deploying defenses against ballistic missile attack. 
     Mr. Safire endorses an approach that will produce far more 
     effective anti-missile protection, far faster and far more 
     inexpensively than any other option--by adapting the Navy's 
     AEGIS fleet air defense system to give it robust missile-
     killing capabilities.
       The AEGIS option has been receiving increasing support in 
     recent weeks. A classified study prepared by the Pentagon's 
     Ballistic Missile Defense Organization that has just been 
     released to Congress reportedly confirms the conclusions of 
     an analysis prepared by another blue-ribbon commission 
     sponsored a few years ago by the Heritage Foundation: Sea-
     based missile defenses are technically feasible and could 
     contribute significantly to protecting the United States--all 
     the United States--as well as America's forces and allies 
     overseas against ballistic missile attack.
       The inherent appeal from strategic, technical and fiscal 
     points of view also prompted Jim Nicholson, the chairman of 
     the Republican National Committee, to make prompt deployment 
     of the AEGIS system the centerpiece of a dramatic 
     pronouncement: In these pages on June 21, he invited 
     ``President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and other 
     Democrats to join [the GOP] and make safeguarding America 
     [against ballistic missile attack] a bipartisan project. If 
     they will not, the Republican Party is prepared to have this 
     become a political issue.''
       The problem, as Mr. Safire has pointed out, is that a sea-
     based missile defense (and indeed, any other that would 
     provide territorial protection of the United States) is 
     inconsistent with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) 
     Treaty. Worse yet, the nation would even be denied the 
     ability to adapt the AEGIS system to make effective defenses 
     against short-range missiles if new treaty arrangements 
     negotiated by the Clinton administration and signed in New 
     York last September are ratified.
       The good news is that the Senate seems unlikely to go along 
     with these agreements. This is particularly true in light of 
     a new legal memorandum prepared for Heritage and providing 
     analytical backup for the common-sense proposition that the 
     ABM Treaty ceased to exist after the other party, the Soviet 
     Union, ceased to exist. It is hard to believe any responsible 
     Senator would want to adopt new treaty impediments to missile 
     defenses in the grim strategic environment described by the 
     Rumsfeld Commission.
       The bad news is that the Clinton administration is 
     proceeding with implementation of the September agreements 
     even though they have yet to be submitted to the Senate for 
     its advice and consent, to say nothing of their having been 
     approved. In a May 1 memorandum, Defense Secretary William 
     Cohen directed that ``formal planning and preparation 
     activities'' to ensure compliance with these accords be 
     undertaken using fiscal 1998 funds. As a practical matter, 
     this means steps that would be non-compliant--for example, 
     developing more capable Navy missile interceptors for the 
     AEGIS system--will be strangled in the crib.
       Taken all together, these developments make one thing 
     perfectly clear: The United States will be defended against 
     missile attack. The only question is: Will its defenses be 
     put into place before they are needed, or after? The answer 
     depends on leadership. With the warning given by the Rumsfeld 
     report and the feasible, affordable defense offered by the 
     AEGIS option, there is no excuse for not providing such 
     leadership on a bipartisan basis. Failing that, the 
     Republicans must not shrink from doing so as a ``political 
     issue.''
                                  ____


                [From the New York Times, July 20, 1998]

          Team B vs. C.I.A.--Rumsfeld Report: Ignore at Peril

                          (By William Safire)

       Washington.--Imagine you are the next U.S. President and 
     this crisis arises:
       The starving army of North Korea launches an attack on 
     South Korea, imperiling our 30,000 troops. You threaten 
     massive air assault; Pyongyang counterthreatens to put a 
     nuclear missile into Hawaii. You say that would cause you to 
     obliterate North Korea; its undeterred leaders dare you to 
     make the trade. Decide.
       Or this crisis: Saddam Hussein invades Saudi Arabia. You 
     warn of Desert Storm II; he says he has a weapon of mass 
     destruction on a ship near the U.S. and is ready to sacrifice 
     Baghdad if you are ready to lose New York. Decide.
       Or this: China, not now a rogue state, goes into an 
     internal convulsion and an irrational warlord attacks Taiwan. 
     You threaten to intervene; within 10 minutes, ICBM's are 
     targeted on all major U.S. cities. Decide.
       Before you do, remember this: in 1998, the C.I.A. told your 
     predecessor that it was highly unlikely that any rogue state 
     ``except possibly North Korea'' would have a nuclear weapon 
     capable of hitting any of the ``contiguous 48 states'' within 
     10 to 12 years. (That's some exception; apparently our 
     strategic assessors are untroubled at the prospect of losing 
     Pearl Harbor again.)
       You have no missile defense in place. The C.I.A. assured 
     your predecessor you would have five years' warning about 
     other nations' weapons development before you would have to 
     deploy a missile defense.
       But the C.I.A. record of prediction is poor. President Bush 
     was assured that Saddam would have no nuclear capability for 
     the next 10 years; when we went in after he invaded Kuwait, 
     however, we discovered Iraq to be less than a year away. And 
     India, despite our expensive satellite surveillance, 
     surprised us with its recent explosion.
       Six months ago, Congress decided to get a second opinion 
     about our vulnerability. Donald Rumsfeld, a former Defense 
     Secretary, was named to lead a bipartisan Commission to 
     Assess the Ballistic Threat to the United States. Its nine 
     members are former high Government officials, military 
     officers and scientists of unassailable credibility. Cleared 
     for every national secret, these men with command experience 
     had the advantage denied to compartmented C.I.A. analysts.
       The unclassified summary of this ``Team B's'' 300-page 
     report was released last week and is a shocker. The direct 
     threat to our population, it concluded, ``is broader, more 
     mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in 
     estimates and reports by the intelligence community.''
       Not only are Iran and other terrorist states capable of 
     producing a nuclear-tipped missile within five years of 
     ordering it up; they are capable of skipping the testing and 
     fine-tuning we have depended on as our cushion to get 
     defenses up. That means, the commission concluded, the 
     warning time the U.S. will have to develop and deploy a 
     missile defense is near zero.
       Let's set aside our preoccupation with executive privileges 
     and hospital lawsuits long

[[Page E1423]]

     enough to consider the consequences of Team B's judgment. The 
     United States no longer has the luxury of several years to 
     put up a missile defense, as we complacently believe. If we 
     do not decide now to deploy a rudimentary shield, we run the 
     risk of Iran or North Korea or Libya building or buying the 
     weapon that will enable it to get the drop on us.
       Rumsfeld's commission was charged only with assessing the 
     new threat and not about what we should do to meet the 
     danger.
       Nine serious men concluded unanimously that our 
     intelligence agencies, on which we spend $27 billion a year, 
     are egregiously misleading us. Smiling wanly, the Director of 
     Central Intelligence, George Tenet, responded that ``we need 
     to keep challenging our assumptions.''
       Wrong; we need to defend ourselves from the likely prospect 
     of surprise nuclear blackmail. A first step is Aegis, a naval 
     theater defense (named after the goatskin shield of Zeus). 
     But that requires this President to redefine a 1972 treaty 
     with the Soviets that he thinks requires us to remain forever 
     naked to all our potential enemies.
       The crisis is not likely to occur as Clinton's sands run 
     out. His successor will be the one to pay--in the coin of 
     diplomatic paralysis caused by unconscionable 
     unpreparedness--for this President's failure to heed Team B's 
     timely warning in 1998
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Times, July 20, 1998]

                        Every Rogue His Missile

       The Commission to assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to 
     the United States delivered its findings to Congress last 
     week, and it would take more than nerves of steel not to find 
     the Commission's report spine-chilling. According to the 
     nine-member bipartisan Commission, the United States could be 
     vulnerable to ballistic missile attack from any number of 
     countries within the next five years. Needless to say, it is 
     not the best boys on the block who look to build ballistic 
     missiles; think North Korea, think Iran, and many other 
     aspiring regional players. Swell, just swell.
       But almost as chilling as the findings themselves is the 
     fact that they are completely at odds with the National 
     Intelligence Estimate (NIE) produced by the CIA just 3 years 
     ago, a document that blithely predicted that this threat 
     would surely not be a problem until 15 years down the road. 
     (Or at least, not for the 48 contiguous states, leaving 
     Alaska and Hawaii to fend for themselves.) Not only was the 
     CIA estimate too optimistic to be believed, it was also 
     blatantly political in the sense of providing arguments for 
     the Clinton administration's opposition to a national 
     ballistic missile defense.
       At the time, an incredulous Republican Congress mandated a 
     new study to be done, a ``Team B'' approach if you will, an 
     alternative analysis. In January, the Commission, under the 
     leadership of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, 
     sat down with the mandate and the access over a six-month 
     period to look at all the CIA's information and studies. 
     Their conclusions were unanimous, and ought to convince any 
     doubters that the urgent need is there to counter the growing 
     threat from abroad before it is too late.
       The language of the 30-page unclassified executive summary 
     (the classified report delivered to the intelligence 
     committees of Congress is five times as long) deserves to be 
     quoted to underline the gravity of the situation:
       ``Concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potentially 
     hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles with biological 
     or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the United 
     States, its deployed forces and its friends and allies. These 
     newer, developing threats in North Korea, Iran and Iraq are 
     in addition to those already posed by Russia and China, 
     nations with which we are not now in conflict but which 
     remain in uncertain transitions. The newer ballistic missile-
     equipped nations' capabilities will not match those of U.S. 
     systems for accuracy or reliability. However, they would be 
     able to inflict major destruction on the U.S. within about 
     five years of a decision to acquire such a capability (10 
     years in the case of Iraq). During several of those years, 
     the U.S. might not be aware that such a decision had been 
     made.'' (Emphasis added.)
       So, will the Rumsfeld Commission change minds in the White 
     House? It should, but don't hold your breath. The Clinton 
     administration is wedded not to real defense but to an 
     unrealistic policy of arms control by international treaties, 
     which often not only are not enforceable, but may exacerbate 
     the problem. Every time a U.S. ambassador delivers a demarche 
     to Russian or Chinese officials over some piece of 
     proliferation business, we signal how American intelligence 
     works--after which information tends to dry up.
       Even more problematic is the fact that the administration 
     is forging ahead with the revision of the Anti-Ballistic 
     Missile (ABM) treaty, seeking implementation of this dubious 
     document before the Senate has approved it, as noted by 
     Thomas Moore of the Heritage Foundation on the opposite page. 
     In fact, most of the administration's resistance to missile 
     defense rests on the notion that this would violate the ABM 
     treaty and offend the Russians, one of the four successor 
     nations that inherited ballistic missiles from the Soviet 
     Union, with which the original treaty was concluded in 1972. 
     Touching as such solicitude for Russian sensitivities may be, 
     it hardly takes into account the fact that Russia is one of 
     the primary sources of proliferation when it comes to missile 
     technology--and precisely one of the problems.
       Enough is enough. We have in the Rumsfeld Commission report 
     evidence aplenty that we are facing a serious national 
     security threat. To continue to leave Americans vulnerable is 
     unconscionable.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Times, July 20, 1998]

                 The Best Defense Is a Missile Defense

                           (By Thomas Moore)

       On July 15 a Congressional commission headed by former 
     Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and composed of some of 
     America's best strategic analysts released its report on the 
     ballistic missile threat to the United States. Contrary to 
     what the Clinton administration would have us believe, the 
     bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission found that a hostile power 
     could deploy long-range missiles capable of striking the 
     United States with little or no warning. The proliferation of 
     missile components or entire systems might equip a rogue 
     regime with strategic missiles before the intelligence 
     community could alert us in time to respond.
       Of course, the best response to the development of such 
     weapons is ballistic missile defense, but the Clinton 
     administration has steadfastly opposed it. In 1995, to 
     deflect criticism of its anti-missile defense posture, the 
     administration tasked the intelligence community to answer 
     skewed questions about the missile threat. These questions 
     were clearly designed to produce an assessment favorable to 
     the president's policies. The result was a National 
     Intelligence Estimate (NIE) assessing the missile threat to 
     the U.S. homeland as 15 years in the future--and 
     incidentally, omitting Hawaii and Alaska from consideration. 
     Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. It was this deeply 
     flawed NIE that forced Congress to create the Rumsfeld 
     Commission.
       It should come as no surprise that the White House 
     politicized U.S. intelligence in order to justify its neglect 
     in defending the nation. In fact, President Clinton 
     politicizes everything he touches. In the words of William 
     Kristol, he and his minions subordinate all the purposes and 
     instrumentalities of government to their selfish purposes. 
     This is the real significance of the parade of scandals 
     emanating from the White House. Perhaps the American people 
     are willing to tolerate sexual misconduct in high office as 
     long as the Dow Jones index continues to soar. But they 
     cannot afford to tolerate official misconduct that 
     jeopardizes their safety and survival.
       Why does the Clinton administration continue to leave 
     Americans defenseless against the world's deadliest weapons? 
     The failure to counter missiles armed with hyperlethal 
     weapons is incomprehensible, since we now have the technology 
     to do the job, and at an affordable cost. But deliberate 
     vulnerability is the administration's preferred policy. It is 
     without precedent in human history--that a great military and 
     economic power, faced with a dire and growing threat, and 
     possessing the means to protect itself, intentionally chooses 
     to remain vulnerable.
       The primary obstacle to missile defense is the 1972 Anti-
     Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with the now defunct Soviet 
     Union. This Cold War relic prohibited each treaty partner 
     from deploying a nationwide missile defense and placed other 
     limits on testing and development, crippling the U.S. missile 
     defense program from the very beginning. The fall of the USSR 
     should have eliminated the ABM Treaty as an obstacle to 
     missile defense. Yet arms control and foreign policy elites, 
     clinging to their old dogmas like pagan priests, have kept 
     the U.S. ensnared in the ABM treaty even though our treaty 
     partner and the Cold War conditions that gave rise to it are 
     long gone.
       The Heritage Foundation recently commissioned a study by 
     the Washington law firm of Hunton & Williams which concludes 
     that the ABM treaty legally terminated with the end of the 
     USSR and the resulting absence of a bona fide treaty partner. 
     This conclusion is based on the relevant Constitutional law 
     and international law, and has been vetted by the nation's 
     top legal scholars.
       However, the Clinton administration is no wedded to the ABM 
     treaty that it is attempting to solve the problem of no 
     legally valid successor by creating a new ABM treaty. An 
     agreement signed last year in New York would convert the now 
     defunct ABM treaty into a new, multi-lateral agreement with 
     Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazahstan. The administration's 
     new ABM agreement would impose new restrictions on the most 
     promising theater missile defenses as well.
       Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution and other 
     laws require that this new ABM treaty come before the Senate 
     for its advice and consent. But the Clinton administration is 
     quietly implementing it without the Senate's approval. This 
     is official misconduct writ large. If allowed to get away 
     with this breach of the Constitution and statute law, the 
     White House would lock us into vulnerability to ballistic 
     missiles for the foreseeable future. As in the suborning of 
     U.S. intelligence, the White House shows a fundamental 
     contempt for the legal and moral norms which have protected 
     our liberty and security for 200 years and made our system of 
     self-government the envy of the world.
       Those who care about America's security and the rule of law 
     must work to make sure

[[Page E1424]]

     the administration does not succeed in implementing the 
     sweeping new restrictions of the New York accords as a mere 
     executive agreement. Defense Secretary William Cohen has 
     already issued guidance to the Pentagon for compliance with 
     the New York ``demarcation'' agreements on theater missile 
     defenses, systems which were not even covered in the original 
     ABM Treaty. The body which implements the ABM Treaty, the 
     Standing Consultative Commission (SCC), will meet again in 
     Geneva in September. Unless blocked by Congress, that meeting 
     will approve a periodic five-year renewal of the 1972 ABM 
     Treaty and take further steps to harden the New York ABM 
     agreement into a fait accompli. Compounding the offense, the 
     American delegation of the SCC is led by a man who has never 
     received Senate confirmation.
       Congress must insist that the White House stop the illegal 
     implementation of the New York ABM agreement and submit it 
     for the Senate's advice and consent in a timely fashion, 
     using all the tools at its disposal if necessary. For 
     example, Congress should amend the relevant appropriations 
     bill to prohibit any funds for ABM treaty-related activities 
     of the SCC until the Senate has had the chance to approve the 
     new ABM package. The Senate can take legislative 
     ``hostages,'' denying confirmation to administration 
     appointees until the White House keeps its promise to submit 
     the new agreements.
       The unprecedented refusal of a U.S. president to perform 
     the most important functions of his office--provide for the 
     common defense and uphold the law--confronts the American 
     people with a stark moral and political dilemma. If we are to 
     have no say through our representatives in Congress over 
     policies that put our lives in jeopardy, can we claim any 
     longer to be self-governing citizens of a constitutional 
     republic? The Rumsfeld Commission has sounded a clear warning 
     about the threat of ballistic missiles. But this warning tell 
     us something else--we can no longer cling to the illusion 
     that the character of our leaders doesn't count. If our 
     leaders won't fulfill their most important moral and 
     political responsibilities, then we the people must held them 
     accountable. The ancient Greeks believed that a man's 
     character is his fate. The same may be said of nations.

     

                          ____________________